Rebuilding life after brain injury : dreamtalk 9780429470769, 0429470762, 9780429894695, 0429894694, 9780429894701, 0429894708, 9780429894718, 0429894716

Table of contents :
What exactly happened? --
Was it that bad? traumatic brain injury --
Coma --
Trauma --
Who am i now? --
Back to work --
Life after near-death --
Plodding on --
Brave neurological world.

Citation preview

Sheena McDonald Allan Little Gail Robinson

REBUILDING LIFE AFTER BRAIN INJURY Dreamtalk

AFTER BRAIN INJURY: SURVIVOR STORIES

“It is near-impossible for this book not to touch one’s heart. The writing is beautiful, powerful and passionate, and tells a story of tragedy, loss, forgiveness, love and hope. In Dreamtalk, Sheena McDonald, Allan Little and Gail Robinson provide very unique, but interwoven, perspectives on traumatic brain injury. Understanding this uniqueness, and translating personal stories into plans to ensure the best possible outcomes, represents the art of neurorehabilitation. This book should be read by clinicians and academics with an interest in neurorehabilitation, and by anyone who wants to learn more about what makes us human.” – Dr. Rudi Coetzer, Consultant Neuropsychologist & Head of the North Wales Brain Injury Service, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, NHS Wales, UK “One fateful day in February 1999 Sheena McDonald sustained a very severe brain injury, changing the trajectory of her life. This book provides a poignant account of her recovery from this traumatic event. Combining Sheena’s account with that of her partner and her neurorehabilitation specialist enables the reader to gain a holistic insight into recovery from brain injury. This book is vital reading for any professional involved in neurorehabilitation, and the individuals and families touched by brain injury. It reminds the reader that every person affected by brain injury can make a remarkable recovery. Life may not be the same as before, but there is hope.” – Dr. Anita Rose, Consultant Clinical Neuropsychologist, The Raphael Hospital, Kent, UK

Rebuilding Life After Brain Injury

Rebuilding Life After Brain Injury: Dreamtalk tells the survival story of Sheena McDonald, who in 1999 was hit by a police van and suffered a very severe brain injury. Sheena’s story is told from her own, personal standpoint and also from two further unique and invaluable perspectives. Allan Little, a BBC journalist and now Sheena’s husband, describes both the physical and mental impact of the injury on himself and on Sheena. Gail Robinson, Sheena’s neuropsychological rehabilitation specialist, provides professional commentaries on Sheena’s condition, assessment and recovery process. The word Dreamtalk, created by Allan to describe Sheena’s once “hallucinogenic state”, sets the tone for this book. It humanises and contextualises the impact of brain injury, providing support and encouragement for patients, professionals and families. It presents exclusive insights into each stage of recovery, spanning coma, altered consciousness, posttraumatic amnesia and rehabilitation; all showing how Sheena has defied conventional clinical expectations and made an exceptional recovery. This book is valuable reading to those who have suffered a brain injury and also to professionals such as neurologists, neuropsychologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists working in the field. Sheena McDonald is a British radio and TV journalist. Allan Little is a British radio and TV journalist working for the BBC, and co-author of The Death of Yugoslavia (1995). Gail Robinson is a Consultant Clinical Neuropsychologist and Associate Professor at the Queensland Brain Institute & School of Psychology, the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. She specialises in detailed single-case studies.

After Brain Injury: Survivor Stories Series Editor: Barbara A. Wilson

This new series of books is aimed at those who have suffered a brain injury, and their families and carers. Each book focuses on a different condition, such as face blindness, amnesia and neglect, or diagnosis, such as encephalitis and locked-in syndrome, resulting from brain injury. Readers will learn about life before the brain injury, the early days of diagnosis, the effects of the brain injury, the process of rehabilitation and life now. Alongside this personal perspective, professional commentary is also provided by a specialist in neuropsychological rehabilitation, making the books relevant for professionals working in rehabilitation such as psychologists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, social workers and rehabilitation doctors. They will also appeal to clinical psychology trainees and undergraduate and graduate students in neuropsychology, rehabilitation science and related courses who value the case study approach. With this series, we also hope to help expand awareness of brain injury and its consequences. The World Health Organization has recently acknowledged the need to raise the profile of mental health issues (with the WHO Mental Health Action Plan 2013–2020) and we believe there needs to be a similar focus on psychological, neurological and behavioural issues caused by brain disorder, and a deeper understanding of the importance of rehabilitation support. Giving a voice to these survivors of brain injury is a step in the right direction. Published titles: A Different Perspective of Life After Brain Injury A Tilted Point of View Christopher Yeoh Locked-In Syndrome After Brain Damage Living Within My Head Barbara A. Wilson, Paul Allen, Anita Rose and Veronika Kubickova For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/AfterBrain-Injury-Survivor-Stories/book-series/ABI

Rebuilding Life After Brain Injury

Dreamtalk

Sheena McDonald, Allan Little and Gail Robinson

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business  2019 Sheena McDonald, Allan Little & Gail Robinson The right of the authors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: McDonald, Sheena, 1954- author. Title: Rebuilding life after brain injury : dreamtalk / Sheena McDonald, Allan Little & Gail Robinson. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, [2019] | Series: After brain injury: survivor stories | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018056878 (print) | LCCN 2019000573 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429470769 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781138600720 (hbk) | ISBN 9781138600737 (pbk) | ISBN 9780429470769 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: McDonald, Sheena, 1954- | Brain—Wounds and injuries. | Brain damage—Patients—Great Britain—Biography. Classification: LCC RD594 (ebook) | LCC RD594 .M33 2019 (print) | DDC 617.4/81044092 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056878 ISBN: 978-1-138-60072-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-60073-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-47076-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

For all who hope to recover For all with the courage to care And for clinicians brave enough to navigate.

Contents

List of figures List of tables Series foreword Professor Barbara Wilson Note Preface

xi xii xiii xv xvii

1 What happened?

1

2 Was it that bad?

9

3 Coma

16

4 Trauma

34

5 Who am I now?

64

6 Back to work

92

7 Life after near-death

113

8 Plodding on

126

9 Brave neurological world

132

Index

139

Figures

2.1 Mechanisms of a TBI 2.2 Memory disturbance and TBI (indicated by solid black vertical line) 3.1 The pebble effect of a TBI as the impact ripples out from the individual 4.1 Stages of recovery and neurorehabilitation 5.1 The impact of a TBI on an individual and life roles 5.2 Sheena and Allan leaving the Astley Ainslie Hospital, May 1999 5.3 Sheena during her first year post-injury 6.1 Sheena at the Gramophone Awards ceremony, 1999 6.2 Frank Boyle cartoon from the Edinburgh Evening News, 2000 6.3 Sheena and Allan in 2000 6.4 Sheena at work in 1995, before the injury 7.1 Sheena and Gail at the National Hospital 8.1 Medical illustration of Sheena’s right-eye scarring 9.1 Sheena at time of writing, 2019

10 12 19 35 65 72 73 98 100 101 102 119 131 136

Tables

2.1 The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS: www.glasgowcomascale. org); Sheena’s GCS in February and March 1999 2.2 Clinical indicators of severity in traumatic brain injury 4.1 Sheena’s short bedside neuropsychological assessment, March 1999 5.1 Sheena’s neuropsychological assessments, March and August 1999

11 13 46 84

Series foreword

After Brain Injury: Survivor Stories was launched in 2014 to meet the need for a series of books aimed at those who have suffered a brain injury and their families and carers. Brain disorders can be life-changing events with far-reaching consequences. However, in the current climate of cuts to funding and service provision for neuropsychological rehabilitation, there is a risk that people whose lives have been transformed by brain injury may be left feeling isolated with little support. So many books on brain injury are written for academics and clinicians and filled with technical jargon, and so are of little help to those directly affected. Instead, this series offers a much-needed personal insight into the experience, as each book is written by a survivor, or group of survivors, who are living with the very real consequences of brain injury. Each book focuses on a different condition, such as face blindness, amnesia and neglect, or diagnosis, such as encephalitis and locked-in syndrome, resulting from brain injury. Readers will learn about life before the brain injury, the early days of diagnosis, the effects of the brain injury, the process of rehabilitation and life now. Alongside this personal perspective, professional commentary is also provided by a specialist in neuropsychological rehabilitation. The historical context, neurological state of the art, and data on the condition, including the treatment, outcome and follow-up, will also make these books appealing to professionals working in rehabilitation, such as psychologists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, social workers and rehabilitation doctors. This series will also be of interest to clinical psychology trainees and undergraduate and graduate students in neuropsychology, rehabilitation science and related courses who value the case study approach as a complement to the more academic books on brain injury.

xiv  Series foreword

With this series, we also hope to help expand awareness of brain injury and its consequences. The World Health Organization has recently acknowledged the need to raise the profile of mental health issues (with the WHO Mental Health Action Plan 2013–2020) and we believe there needs to be a similar focus on psychological, neurological and behavioural issues caused by brain disorder, and a deeper understanding of the importance of rehabilitation support. Giving a voice to these survivors of brain injury is a step in the right direction. Professor Barbara A. Wilson, OBE, PhD, DSc, CPsychol, FBPsS, FmedSC, AcSS Clinical Neuropsychologist January 2017

Note

This book incorporates three points of view: that of Sheena, her husband Allan, and Sheena’s clinical neuropsychologist, Gail Robinson. To distinguish between the different speakers, three different styles of font have been used, as follows: Sheena – serif; Allan – italics; Gail – sans-serif

Preface

Twenty years ago I suffered a very severe head-injury. The clinical shorthand for this is TBI – traumatic brain injury. Today, I am a nonconformist TBI survivor. I seem to have defied conventional clinical expectations. I am not typical – which makes me typical. Every brain injury is unique. I was 44, a successful freelance broadcast journalist, working in radio and television in and from the United Kingdom for the BBC, Channel 4, STV, ITV and numerous non-broadcast contractors. What some viewers remember me for is reading the news on Scottish Television or Channel 4 – but my work took me far and wide, and I covered a wide range of current affairs: art, religion, education, business and war. That was my life before the injury. I was knocked down when crossing the road in Islington in London, in February 1999, by a police van being driven on the wrong side of the road. My injury was to the head and it was very severe. So my life after that has developed variously. Formally, I am a statistic in the folder labelled RTA – road traffic accidents. Severe and very severe head-injuries can be externally generated as mine was – in or by motor vehicles, or by falling or being violently attacked (traumatic brain injuries or TBIs); they can also be internally generated, by some form of stroke or similar neurological event. Together, these categories are designated as acquired brain injuries – ABIs. Each case is different, but many share elements which enable professional and lay carers to assist the sufferer to recover a greater or lesser degree of what they have lost: their short-term and long-term memories; their ability to lay down new memories; their ability to use language – and much more. Two voices that help to tell my story are such people – one professional and one lay. Gail Robinson is Associate Professor of Clinical

xviii Preface

Neuropsychology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. In 1999, she worked at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. The second voice is that of Allan Little. He had been my partner for some five years, and was working as a television and radio foreign correspondent for the BBC. In 1999, he was based in Moscow. Over the five years following the injury, he and I met regularly with Gail Robinson, whose professional guidance and support was vital to my long and slow recovery. Gail now lives and works in Australia, while Allan and I are based in the UK. However any form of brain injury is acquired, the immediate sufferer is usually the last person to become aware of the event, the subsequent condition and its long-term implications. It is the family and friends who agonize over their loved one’s comatose body and addled mind. And brain-injury is still viewed with fear. Surely anyone who survives such colossal damage can never be the same person, far less be able to learn and earn, live and love, contribute and participate, initiate and develop. I suffered a very severe brain-injury at a time when I was sufficiently in the public eye for it to make headlines. The fact that I am writing this (without the help of a ghost-writer) may, of course, suggest that the injury cannot have been so severe. I do not seek to offer false hope to the relatives of other sufferers – simply to suggest that conventional professional wisdom does not always construe situations correctly. It is impossible to generalise about braininjury. Every single case is different. There are a few common themes: •• •• ••

Any and every recovery takes time – far longer than any broken bone; longer, too, than many heart conditions or forms of cancer. Relatives and carers must brace themselves: they are in it for the long haul. The eventual results may or may not be fulfilling and satisfactory.

Recovering from TBI or ABI: there is a cadre of neurologists that believes that “recovery” is an unachievable outcome for the severely brain-injured. This is my story.

Chapter 1

What happened?

The twenty-sixth of February 1999 was an important day for me, but I remember very little about it. My life changed significantly – not through graduation, or marriage, or bereavement, but by being hit by a police van driving down the wrong side of the road. It happened at the end of what had been a busy day. I woke in my house in London, and set off to catch an early flight to Glasgow, where I was to chair a one-day political conference about how the coming Scottish Parliament would improve opportunities and life for women in Scotland. On the way out to the airport, the taxi broke down. Unusual, and infuriating. I could not miss this flight. I am told I hitched a lift – I have no memory of this – and did catch the plane. I told the assembled women at the conference about the trip to the airport, and finished the story – “. . . and I thought this was going to be the worst day of my life!” At the end of the day, I travelled back to London, where I had a meeting with the editor of a BBC political programme which I was due to present in two weeks’ time – something I had done regularly. I also had a meeting with Channel 4 News – a regular source of work as a presenter and reporter. My main activity that evening was to attend a lecture at BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, to be given by the retiring head of the British Board for Film Censorship (as it was then called), James Ferman. I asked a question from the floor during the subsequent discussion. After the event, we continued the conversation in the bar. I had a glass of white wine, and we discussed the nature and purpose of censorship. At eleven o’clock the bar closed. I turned down the offer of a lift from James Ferman and his wife, and elected to go back to Islington by taxi. I retain no memory of the next hour, so what follows is factually based conjecture.

2  What happened?

When I reached Islington it was just before midnight. The regular Friday night tattoo of police-car sirens filled the air. As ever, in a built-up area, it was impossible to tell where the noise was coming from. Having reached the Angel crossroads, the taxi was stuck in a double lane of gridlocked traffic. I got out and paid the driver, intending to walk the remaining quarter-mile home. I had done this before: I resent paying to sit in a motionless cab. I started to cross the road between the stationary cars. Halfway across, I looked left, to where traffic going westwards would be approaching. There was nothing coming. It was safe to cross. So I stepped into the road and straight into the path of a police vehicle – a van. It was travelling in an easterly direction – on the wrong side of the road.

BANG! I have no recollection of being hit. I have met no eyewitnesses. I was wearing a winter coat, trousers and flat shoes. The police driver was steering two tons of metal, at a certain speed. Aside from the driver and passenger, no-one saw exactly what happened. Plenty of folk saw the immediate aftermath, including a couple of off-duty nurses and a doctor on his way home. By complete coincidence, he was the son of someone my mother met at a party some time later. He spoke to his mother on the phone the following day: “I think she was dead, or will die.” Years later, I read the incident report by PC Bryce of Scratchwood Police who attended the scene on the night. He relied on people who were there and what they said: Police van on call filtering through traffic. Saw pedestrian on near side stepping out therefore moved away. Continued to walk out into middle of road, looking away from van therefore started to brake. Collided with pedestrian and carried short distance on front of van before falling beneath it. Van reversed away from pedestrian immediately. Pedestrian driven over by van itself?? Accident investigators estimate maximum speed 20–25 mph. The immediate consequence of suffering a profound blow on the head from a potentially lethal weapon travelling at some speed is not a fast replay of one’s previous life. My life did not flash before me. I experienced no glimpse of “the next life”. Many weeks later, I mentioned this to Allan. He sniffed. “You didn’t die,” he pointed out. But I came close.

What happened?  3

Some years later, I requested notes from the three hospitals where I was treated – and police-records, such as they were – and I questioned my family and Allan in order to try to build an understanding of what happened. I was taken by ambulance to University College London’s Accident and Emergency Unit where I lapsed into a coma. This was assessed at Level 6 on the Glasgow Coma Scale. The hospital notes record: This 44-year-old lady was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit following a road traffic accident in which she was a pedestrian hit by a van travelling at approximately 30 mph. She sustained a significant head injury, a peri-orbital fracture plus multiple facial fractures and an oblique fracture of her left middle finger. She required intubation in the A&E Department and following a CT scan of her head was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit. The “peri-orbital fracture” locates where the van hit me, just above my right eye. Intubation, or endotracheal intubation (a procedure for taking over mechanical control of the most basic functions, using tubes), and assisted ventilation were carried out, apparently with some difficulty. First, I had to be paralysed. I am told that this can be distressing when one is fully conscious, but I was completely unconscious. Recovery begins in a very fundamental way. Those who saw me soon after the injury told me much later that my physical injuries looked dramatic. My eyes were swollen shut (and when they were prised open, the whites were bright red, and swollen). I was bruised all over my body. My brother, Rod, was the first blood relative to see me. Years later he shared his memories. “It was a week after my 40th birthday. Sheena had come to Peterborough on my birthday to celebrate. I remember getting the phone-call from my dad about seven o’clock the morning after she was knocked down. My wife Diane and I got the next train to London and went straight to the hospital. Sheena was in a deep coma. She was unrecognisable. Her head was black and blue and swollen to twice the normal size and there was a large hole in the right side of her face where her eye should have been. I was in shock – I was numb. I could not see how Sheena could survive this. “My mum and dad arrived later in the day on the train from Edinburgh. I remember my dad was in tears – I had never seen my dad cry before.”

4  What happened?

My mother’s recollection is vivid: “If the police call at 4 a.m. you can be sure than something catastrophic has happened. We caught a train early in the morning to London to be paged by the police at Kings Cross Station. They drove us to the hospital, and for several days were very attentive (admission of guilt?). “Sheena was unconscious and totally unrecognisable. Her face was so damaged and swollen that her eyes seemed to have disappeared. She had an oxygen mask on and there was a tangle of other pipes.” Mum was to spend the next four weeks at my bedside, but I remember nothing of her being there. Twenty-four hours after the injury, Allan arrived. I was sleeping late. Moscow is three hours ahead, which, since the main evening news was then aired at 9 p.m. in the UK, meant that it was after midnight before I’d finished work. I’d had a drink with colleagues after working late and had got back to my Moscow flat in the small hours, finally getting to bed probably not long before Sheena was crossing that fateful road. The call woke me from a deep sleep and I answered it groggily. To my surprise I heard the voice of my oldest and closest friend, Alan. He was ringing from his home in Scotland. Like me he’d made a career in the media and was well connected at Channel 4, and he’d heard what had happened from friends there. I greeted him as cheerfully as I could in my under-slept state, but I could tell there was something not right. He didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “I’ve got bad news,” he said, straight off. “Sheena’s been in an accident. It looks quite serious.” These were the last days of the old world before instant internet communications. I didn’t even have a mobile phone. Alan gave me a landline number in London which he said was a visitors’ room in the hospital Sheena had been admitted to. I asked Alan to call my parents and tell them what had happened. Alan had known my parents since we were teenagers and they liked him. I knew I couldn’t face breaking this news to them so asked Alan to do that for me. I rang the number Alan had given me, and Sheena’s brother Rod answered. He told me what he knew: that it had been a police van driving on the wrong side of the road. He’d seen Sheena and it looked bad. I don’t remember much more. Your mind goes into freefall and you find yourself incapable of coherent thought. I knew I had to get back to London but found myself unable even to organise the packing of a bag.

What happened?  5

My phone rang again. It was my sister Nina. She was crying and the sound of her voice broke me too. I heard myself sobbing and saying over and over again “I don’t know what to do.” I asked her to reassure our parents that I was fine and that everything was going to be OK. I knew I had to get back to London that day. But there was a problem. My passport was locked in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, because my visa and work permit were due for renewal. It was a Saturday. I had no idea what to do. I rang my friend Rob Parsons, a fellow BBC Moscow Correspondent and (unlike me) a fluent Russian speaker. I told him I had to get home to London – today. Rob contacted a duty diplomat in the British Embassy – a young Scot who I would meet much later and to whom I will always be grateful – and he arranged for my passport to be liberated from Russia’s bureaucracy. I would also need an exit visa – the process normally took several days, but the young Scot arranged for one to be issued at the airport. Rob drove me to the airport, steered me in a haze of grief and disbelief through the nightmare bureaucracy of the Russian emigration system, gave me the name of a London hotel the BBC had booked for me, and put me on the plane. No flight I have ever taken has seemed more interminable. I wanted desperately to get to London but after three hours, as the plane began its descent and shuddered through the cloud cover, I was full of foreboding. It had been hours since I’d spoken to Rod. Sheena’s condition had been very precarious. Suddenly I didn’t want the flight to end at all, for fear of what I might find when I landed. I knew that I would soon learn whether Sheena was still alive. It terrified me. This is how the journey starts for those closest to the brain injury survivor. It’s a journey that changes the trajectory of your life, your priorities, your values, your hopes and ambitions, your sense of who you are in the world, and your relationship with those around you. But you don’t know it yet. Other bad things might have happened in your life but there has always been a back-to-normal resolution. This, I would learn, would be different. A barrier had descended cutting Sheena and me off from our past lives. I didn’t know it yet but there would be no going back to the way things had been before that day; no “normal” to go back to. You are entering a new and unknown country, with an unfamiliar language and no map. I took a cab from Gatwick. I had no luggage with me. It was close to midnight and the streets were cold and quiet. The hospital entrance was in a dark side-street off the Tottenham Court Road. There were a couple of homeless men sprawled by the doorstep surrounded by cigarette butts

6  What happened?

and empty beer cans. I had to step over them to get in. A central London Accident and Emergency Department on a Saturday night is full of sullen or angry drunks with varying minor injuries – fat lips, broken jaws, split heads. The reception area was desolate and soulless: bloodied clothes discarded, puddles of muddy water on the floor. An ambulance crew swept through and I stopped one of them. He directed me up a flight of stairs to a little landing. There were two doors. A sign above one said “Visitors Room”. This was the room where Rod had been when I’d spoken to him earlier. I remember thinking “Was it really only today? It already feels like an age ago”. The sign above the other door said “Intensive Care Unit”. You entered through double swing-doors. I went in, and, surprised that there was no ante-room, found myself standing by the bed of a woman I didn’t know who, I learned later, had contracted malaria on holiday in Africa and had ignored the symptoms until it was too late. There were four beds in the room; not really beds at all, but gurneys, functional platforms designed to give the greatest possible access for the application of urgent medical intervention. Sheena was in the one furthest from the door. She lay covered in a single white sheet. The room was hot. There were no windows and no natural light. I would learn in the days that lay ahead that there was no day or night in this room, just a continual here-and-now of unchanging artificial light – and vital artificial life support. It surprised me too that the night-shift nurses, when they spoke to each other, spoke loudly, casually. Why weren’t they whispering? It seemed an offence against the time of night and I wondered why they didn’t take more care not to rouse their sleeping patients. My learning curve was steepening. None of the patients, I quickly realised, was capable of being roused. They were all comatose. That’s why they were here. At first I didn’t recognise Sheena. I thought there had been a mistake; that it wasn’t her. She was unrecognisable. Her face was enormous, swollen and discoloured, red and blue in patches, and her eyelids were a violent distressed crimson. Her chest rose and fell to the pace of the ventilator that was moving air through her lungs by tubes that twisted her mouth into a grimace. I saw that the right-hand-side of her abdomen was also a vivid black and blue, from her head, down her torso, to her knees. Wires were taped to her face, her arms, her hands and across her chest. Behind her, black and green screens monitored her heartbeat, her blood pressure, her breathing.

What happened?  7

Her hair was swept back from her forehead and this gave me my moment of recognition. The hairline was hers. And the feet protruding from the sheet at the bottom of the bed were also distinctively, recognisably her own. The hole above her right eye that Rod had reported earlier in the day had been hastily stitched up by a maxillofacial surgeon. He’d worked well, piecing the the torn and swollen tissue back together, reassembling the contours of her face as best he could, but he’d had to work quickly alongside trauma surgeons performing more urgent, life-saving tasks, and the scar that would be left above her eye would need attention, and more surgery, later. “Maxillofacial”: relating to the jaw and face, from the Latin maxillla, meaning “jaw”; the first new word in an alienating and clinical new lexicon that would now enter our lives and help steer us through this bewildering terrain. I stayed into the small hours just staring. The nurses – there was a ratio of one nurse to one patient – were kindly but matter-of-fact. It was all in a day’s work to them. I started to talk to her. I was scared by the idea that inside her head there would be some knowledge of what had happened, some flickering consciousness of the predicament and danger she was in, and that she would be feeling fear. “There’s been an accident,” I said. “You’ve had a bang on the head and that’s why you’re a bit groggy, but the medics are on it, they’ve had a good look and everything is going to be OK. It’ll just take a bit of time. You’re going to be fine.” I repeated this over and over, knowing it was a lie. The nurses let me do this, indulging my need. They knew perfectly well – though I didn’t – that it wasn’t making a blind bit of difference to Sheena, who couldn’t hear a thing, but I see now that they thought it was probably a good thing for me. And it was. It was my first tentative act in the role that I was now assuming – though again I didn’t yet know it: the role of principal carer. In the middle of the night the nurse assigned to Sheena’s care decided, I think, that it would be better for me to get some rest. “She’s heavily sedated,” he said. “She’s not really aware of anything. It’s probably better for you to get some sleep. You’ll need your energy in the coming days.” I didn’t know then what I would learn later - that the part of her brain where fear and anxiety normally reside were so badly bruised and swollen, compressed against the confining cage of her skull, that they were just not functioning. Fear, anxiety, silent terror – these emotions were neurologically impossible for her.

8  What happened?

Seeing, I think, that I was bewildered, the nurse touched my arm as though to reassure me. “I was on duty when they brought her in last night,” he said. “It was really touch and go. Her throat tissue was so swollen that we had trouble ‘intubating’ her. . .” – “intubation”: the second new word of my now medicalised life – “. . . and we were a few seconds away from doing a tracheotomy, cutting a hole in her throat so that we could get the tubes into her lungs. She was in a very bad way. Tonight, I’m amazed how stable she is. I’m not a doctor, but I’ve been in intensive care for a few years, and you just get a feeling sometimes. And when I came in tonight and saw her I thought – yeah, this one’s going to make it.”

Chapter 2

Was it that bad?

Traumatic brain injury The acronyms that relate to head-injury – TBI (traumatic brain injury), ABI (acquired brain injury), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), CATor CT-scanning (computerized axial tomography, an X-ray procedure which records soft tissue as well as bone, and detects bleeding), PTA (post-traumatic amnesia) – were unknown to me before the injury, as they are to most sufferers and carers. Later, I read that “the longer the length of coma and PTA, the poorer will be the outcome”. I was deemed to have suffered a “very severe head injury”, and the medical profession’s expectations accorded to that.

What is a traumatic brain injury? An external force to the head causes a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The most common type of TBI is a “closed TBI”, which occurs when the external force causes the brain to move within the skull. For instance, a closed TBI occurs when someone falls or is involved in a motor vehicle accident, like in Sheena’s case. By contrast, an “open TBI” occurs when an object such as a bullet penetrates the skull. The mechanics of a TBI can be understood by knowing that the brain is similar in consistency to a firm jelly, and it is enclosed in a hard bony casing, the skull, with any space left filled with cerebrospinal fluid, which cushions the brain and provides buoyancy to protect it in everyday life. A TBI is an extraordinary blow that far exceeds the force of bouncing and jolting that occurs during our typical daily movements. What does this mean? The sheer force of the blow and impact of a moving vehicle with a relatively stationary person is a “David and Goliath” battle. It would be remarkable if there were to be no consequences from the impact of a TBI.

10  Was it that bad?

TBI defined: primary and secondary damage How exactly does a TBI affect the brain? A TBI can result in primary damage to a very specific (or focal) part of the brain, with the frontal and temporal areas most vulnerable to trauma (Walsh, 1991). Primary focal injuries can include skull fractures (linear – skull is “split”; depressed – skull is “dented”), contusions or “bruising” at the impact coup site or on the opposite contrecoup side of the brain and haemorrhages (bleeds within the brain – intracranial – or above/below the coverings of the brain – epidural, subdural or subarachnoid bleeds) (see Figure 2.1). A TBI can also result in widespread damage, which affects a greater number of areas and is also known as diffuse axonal injury. Diffuse axonal injury

Figure 2.1  Mechanisms of a TBI

Was it that bad?  11 Table 2.1  The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS: www.glasgowcomascale.org); Sheena’s GCS in February and March 1999 Date GCS assessed 27/2  3/3   6/3 EYE OPENING (4 points)

Spontaneous Responds to speech Responds to pain None

4             ∗ 3 2         ∗ 1    ∗

VERBAL RESPONSE (5 points)

Oriented to time, place and person Confused and some disorientation Produces words (inappropriate to context) Produces sound (incomprehensible) None

5

Responds and obeys commands Moves to localized pain Flexion withdrawal from pain Abnormal flexion Abnormal extension None Sheena’s GCS in A&E = 6/15

6             ∗

MOTOR RESPONSE (6 points)

Total = 15

4             ∗ 3 2         ∗ 1   

∗

5 4    ∗ 3 2         ∗ 1 6/15   6/15 14/15

occurs when the white matter of the brain, or axons of the nerve cells, are disturbed and the electrical signal between neurons is disrupted. Clinicians often use the analogy of “stretching” a wire so it shears or is torn; this results in electrical signals not being efficiently transferred. Implicated in diffuse axonal injury is secondary damage due to the release of other chemicals into the brain. At this point, I will mention several specific terms that are common in TBIs. Secondary injuries may include hypoxia (lack of oxygen to the brain), multi-focal microvascular injuries (ischaemia), cerebral swelling (oedema), post-traumatic hydrocephalus (accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain) and post-traumatic seizures (caused by disruption to brain electrical activity) (for overview see Barker, Gibson and Robinson, 2018). Neuroimaging of TBI can be nonspecific or give generalised indicators. As for Sheena, on admission to A&E computerized tomography (CT) is typically the first technique used to ascertain primary damage, including

12  Was it that bad?

contusions, haemorrhages and skull fractures. This is how Sheena’s right maxillofacial fracture was confirmed, as well as an intracranial haemorrhage in the left occipital lobe. At later stages, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can reveal subtler or finer-grained damage, including white matter changes and diffuse axonal injury. For a detailed scientific investigation of neuroimaging the extent of diffuse axonal injury following TBI, and the relationship of this with memory and other aspects of cognition, see the study led by Dr. David Sharp and Sheena’s Consultant Neurologist, Dr. Richard Greenwood (Kinnunen et al., 2010).

TBI signs and severity An altered state of consciousness is the most consistent clinical characteristic following TBI. This can include a loss of consciousness, memory disturbance or changes in the functions of the brain. Loss of consciousness means that a person lacks awareness of themself or the environment, which can range from a partial loss (or disorientation) to a complete loss, in which case an individual may appear to be asleep. Memory disturbance can be for events prior to the TBI (retrograde amnesia) or for events after the TBI (anterograde amnesia; see Figure 2.2). In broad terms these changes can disturb physical functions such as muscle tone, balance or mental functions, the latter impacting cognition (or thinking skills), behaviour and emotions. Measuring the level of consciousness is currently the best indicator of injury severity and outcome. The two clinical measures that are most frequently used are (1) the depth and duration of coma and (2) the duration of post-traumatic amnesia (PTA). These two measures correlate with the severity of the diffuse brain injury sustained and subsequent functional outcome (see Ponsford, Sloan and Snow, 1995).

"Old" memories Retrograde amnesia

Coma + PTA

"New" memories Anterograde amnesia

Time

Figure 2.2  Memory disturbance and TBI (indicated by solid black vertical line)

Was it that bad?  13 Table 2.2  Clinical indicators of severity in traumatic brain injury (Sheena in bold) Measure

Glasgow Coma Scale Loss of consciousness Post-traumatic amnesia

Severity classification Mild

Moderate

Severe

Very severe

Extremely severe

13–15

9–12

3–8

–

–

24hrs

–

–

>7 days

1–4 weeks

>4 weeks

90th percentile) High average (47/50: 75–90th percentile) Superior (>90th percentile) Average (50–75th percentile)

Recall memory: AMIPB Stories5 Recall memory: Rey complex figure6 LANGUAGE AND NUMERACY FUNCTIONS Graded Naming Test: Impaired objects7 (3/30: one year) once you can appreciate changes (Fleminger, 2008; Rapoport, 2012). Kreutzer and colleagues (2001), for example, found that about 40% of TBI patients presented with major depressive symptoms about two-and-a-half years post-TBI. The triggers for this vary depending on individual and contextual factors. Often, cognitive behavioural therapy can be effective in addressing mood symptoms, including depression. The psychiatrist Declan Murphy recommended anti-depressants in combination with cognitive behaviour therapy. I worked with a colleague that provided this for individuals like Sheena; however, this did not appeal to her. So we continued with our sessions and incorporated an approach to target and improve mood. We focused on increasing

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Figure 7.1  Sheena and Gail at the National Hospital Source: Suki Dhanda, The Observer

and noting pleasant activities and we monitored and challenged automatic negative thoughts. At the same time Sheena also started a serotonin-based medication. This immediately provided a buffer from her “gloominess”. I am also of the view it is best to go through grief and feel the loss, rather than avoidance. My experience is that it rarely dissipates when ignored! Over the next few months a routine of exercise with a few regular work engagements became the foundation of moving through the grief cycles. By October, Sheena was proactively choosing work depending on her level of interest and fatigue. A new goal emerged to write and journal about her experience. This was a useful exercise in developing discipline and training concentration. Sheena also started to develop a new awareness of herself and noticed changes such as a decrease in her sense of smell and not noticing temperature changes. A new topic emerged regarding memory. After the TBI retrograde amnesia was present as Sheena had lost access to some of her old memories. This quickly resolved and was minimal. However, almost two years post-TBI,

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Sheena became aware that her old autobiographical (or episodic) memories seemed a little vague in some ways. This contrasted with good clear knowledge of semantic memories for public events. This theme ran through the next few years and Sheena was extremely curious about how one could have a sense of self without these memories. The documentary that Sheena made, Who Am I Now?, explored the nature of consciousness and identity when the “self” is disrupted and memories lost. It was more than a year later when Sheena started to come to terms with the seriousness of her TBI. In September 2001, I noted that Sheena had wondered if this was as good as it gets, and that she may never be the same. Yes, this is the point when I know that a major shift has occurred. Sheena had finally understood that things had changed, but at the same time, life was full of opportunities. Soon after this, with Allan, we talked about her vision for the future.

There are clear dangers in going back to work too soon. If you don’t meet the professional standards you achieved before the injury, your colleagues and potential employers will be unforgiving. Sheena had succeeded at the Gramophone Awards and in the Foreign Ministers panel at the Commonwealth Summit in Durban. But it didn’t always go well. Before the injury she’d presented a daily politics programme at lunchtime on Channel 4. In early 2000, more than a year after the injury, they asked her back to present a special edition to discuss the forthcoming London mayoral election. Ken Livingstone, who was the favourite to win, was one of the live guests. I watched at home. I was full of apprehension. Sheena looked and sounded fine to begin with but I could tell she was beginning to become weary and at one point she appeared to forget that she was presenting the programme and that it was up to her to steer the whole thing. There was a pause after someone spoke and Sheena smiled at what had been said and seemed to be waiting for something else to happen. I was mortified. Television magnifies everything. Ken Livingstone then intervened by making another point and it seemed to me that he had seen what had happened and decided to rescue the situation – and rescue Sheena. I was heartbroken. She had not gotten away with it this time. I don’t think she even knew what had happened: her ability to monitor her own behaviour was improving, but it still wasn’t back to anywhere near her pre-injury level of functioning. I decided to say nothing.

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Within two weeks of starting to take the serotonin-based drug Cipramil, I began to perk up. Things felt less bleak. I had work – less than previously, but almost enough to keep body and soul together, and I had friends. Why was I complaining? I took the advice to book a session of cognitive behavioural therapy at a clinic in Wimpole Street, but found it underwhelming – and expensive. One session was one too many, I decided. I would stick to drugs. One hard truth faced by a survivor of any trauma is the immediate effect on one’s income and finances. My “survivor-celebrity” status had run its term. The phone had gone quiet. There is a natural cut-off point to public sympathy and interest. I might now be making an extraordinary and textbook-defying recovery but I had to face the bleak truth that the road ahead would be stony. I would have to initiate new work for myself. I was servicing two mortgages, one in London and one in Edinburgh, and now earning practically nothing. My savings were dwindling fast – and no friends or relations had funds to spare for my welfare. I was saved from penury thanks to Alexander Querns, a financial adviser who, almost 20 years previously, had recommended to me a critical injury insurance policy. The monthly premiums had been predictably steep, but when I went freelance in my 20s, he had persuaded me that they were a wise investment since no employer existed to give me sick pay should it ever be needed. He now took me out for lunch. “I think your case qualifies for the redemption of this policy,” he said – and it did. The £100,000 I received served to keep the wolf from the door for some years. Allan, meanwhile, analysed my mortgage costs, and figured out that they could be enormously reduced. I was still suffering chronic fatigue, and beginning to realise that this was a long game. And I was at last coming to acknowledge the unpleasant new reality that having been severely underweight, I was now seriously overweight. One day in a taxi in London Sheena gestured toward a young woman in the street. She was very overweight. It was a hot day and she was wearing an ill-fitting t-shirt and struggling to pull a backpack onto her shoulders. The effort was making her red in the face. “Am I as big as her?” Sheena said. “Yes,” I said. “Nearly.” She was shocked. Clearly she had had no idea. When she looked at herself in the mirror she simply saw herself, and failed to register all the weight that had piled on.

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“Just eat less,” said Allan. He was right, but my attempts fell foul of my now characteristic tendency to confabulate. Oh yes, I would tell myself and everyone else, I’ve cut right down. But the scales told a different story. Vanity can take a long time to kick in after a brain-injury. Gail’s efforts to engender dietary self-discipline in me were unsuccessful. I remained amazed by Allan’s dedication and patience in relation to me. He was always, work allowing, only a phone-call away, and throughout the first year of my recovery, had been a constant presence. He monitored and moderated my behaviour, and helped me negotiate this brave new world I now inhabited. In fact, as my principal carer, he now had a second fulltime job. Whenever Sheena vented her frustration on me, I tried, always, to remember that it was the injury speaking. There were moments of determined negativity, when nothing I did or said was good enough; everything had to interpreted in the most negative light. There was an increasing resort to passive-aggressive defence: “Oh of course you must be right because I’ve had a brain injury, why should anybody, least of all you, listen to anything I say?” There is no way to answer that doesn’t lend itself to more negative interpretation. I tried, and didn’t always succeed, to avoid escalating, to avoid biting back. One day, at home, after Sheena had said something barbed and unkind and unanswerable, I said, without planning it, I’ve got nothing left. I’m emptied out. There’s nothing left in me to offer to make this better. I’m going out for a walk. I’ll be back in 20 minutes and when I come back, it’s your turn. It’s your turn to think of something to make this better. Your turn to think about how I’m feeling in all of this. It felt selfish. But I had felt utterly defeated. And when I came back Sheena was quiet and simply hugged me without saying anything and we stayed like that, in silence, for a long while. I think gradually we understood that this was a shared enterprise; that we had to understand, to work out, how Sheena could play a role in her own recovery and in mine, for my life had been derailed by that police van that night and I too was a survivor in recovery; we had to understand what we could do to progress our shared recovery as a partnership, as a couple – and how, crucially, she could help me through this as much as I was trying to help her.

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In June it was time to move to Johannesburg. Sheena was getting more offers of work. These meant a lot to her and I saw that the work that was coming in was contributing to her recovery. She decided not to come to Johannesburg: she would, instead, come often to visit, as she had done during my previous foreign postings. I went to Johannesburg and tried to throw myself into the job the way I had done the first time I’d taken up the post, six years earlier. Within a few weeks I had accepted it wouldn’t work. It was impossible to be apart from Sheena. Our lives had wrapped themselves around each other so fully that we had to be together. On my next trip to London I went to see my boss. “It has been a mistake to go back,” I said to him. “I thought it would be like it was the first time I was there. But everything’s different now. I don’t think I can stay.” He was a thoughtful and decent man. “I have to ask you to do it for a year,” he said. “And during that year we’ll think about what to do with you next.” I’d already done three months. I would now be counting the days, even as I rushed to the airport to take a flight to Congo or Nairobi or Freetown. That, for me, was, I think, the end of the journey that began on that grim winter’s day in Moscow when I had taken the phone call in my flat and heard the news that Sheena had been run over. It had taken 18 months to understand that there would be no going back to normal. The normal we’d known had ended with a police van driving on the wrong side of the road at midnight on a north London street. Finally I had come to understand it, and accept it. When he began to spend more time abroad again, our relationship sometimes suffered. I felt that he tended to over-compensate for his absence when he returned, reminding me of my ongoing frailties, and warning me to control my newfound self. I attempted to bite my tongue with good grace, for I guess his assessment of me was probably more or less accurate, and because I knew that he had suffered. “Secondary trauma” is the term used to describe what relatives of injured people experience. Others close to me coped in their own ways with what had happened. My mother abruptly took to her bed, and slept for days on end. Her GP was mystified, and all her various anti-depressant prescriptions failed to hit the mark. After a couple of months of self-imposed sleep therapy, Ma came round.

124  Life after near-death

My father, a retired Church of Scotland minister, prayed – as many people told me they did, including the man who calls himself a “Presbyterian agnostic” – Allan. My sister abandoned her lifelong “little sister” persona, while my sister-in-law became the family peacemaker. Many friends rallied round. I thought more than before about the point of it all. I decided that there are many reasons to live. We all can give, and are all valuable. Some of us have children, some are artists, some bus drivers, some surgeons. Some are kind to neighbours, some smile at strangers. After taking Cipramil for over a year, I elected to stop. I never felt the need to return to it. But two years on from the injury I was still tired, with no energy reserves. I could now, if work demanded it, get through a whole day, but needed to make up the lost sleep on subsequent days. People again said, “Oh, I feel like that – it’s age!” and I smiled. Mine was not the fatigue that comes with age but a condition far more immediate and demanding and irresistible. I resolved to visit Allan in South Africa for the second post-injury Christmas. I arrived on Christmas Day after doing a presenting job for BBC Radio 4 in Paris on 23 December. Allan met me at the airport and took me to his new home, decorated and festive. We had a lovely day, followed by a couple of days on safari. Then he was unexpectedly scrambled to Zimbabwe, so I had to head home earlier than planned. On our last night together, Allan invited a friend round so was late to bed – where he instantly embarked on what he later called “a wobbly”. He accused me of using him, of abusing his good nature and tolerance, of dismissing his friends – all in all, a classic tiff. Thinking about things, flying home, I realised that this was the inevitable consequence of his being thrown into the role of carer, and getting nothing back except increasing dependency. I must stand on my own two feet, I resolved. But the uneasy joust continued for some months, off and on. Perhaps, I wondered, it was a side-effect of living so far apart. His life, rightly, was where he lived – Africa – but he disliked hearing me say that because it prompted him to feel guilty. I read that 75% of relationships do not survive injuries like mine, whether or not the partners are married. So when Allan elected after a year in South Africa to come back, I had modest expectations.

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References Fleminger, S. (2008). “Long-term psychiatric disorders after traumatic brain injury”. European Journal of Anaesthesiology, 25(S42), 123–130. Kreutzer, J.S., Seel, R.T. and Gourley, E. (2001). “The prevalence and symptom rates of depression after traumatic brain injury: a comprehensive examination”. Brain Injury, 15(7), 563–576. Rapoport, M.J. (2012). “Depression following traumatic brain injury”. CNS Drugs, 26(2), 111–121.

Chapter 8

Plodding on

I was hired to report on and present a BBC World Service series on domestic violence, gathering material and reporting from Nicaragua, where there was a pioneering programme aimed at rehabilitating and reforming abusive men. I actively enjoyed this – and the financial fillip. Aside from trying to re-fashion a portfolio of work, I was preparing for the civil case against the Met, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) action against the police driver having been dismissed. I had been grievously injured, thereby potentially obliging someone to care for me or to pay for my care. I could not count on Allan forever. I was no longer driving despite being permitted to do so. I had lost actual and potential earnings. I wanted justice to be done. It goes without saying that I had not received an apology or an admission of culpability from anyone. I remembered an incident I had been involved in, some years before, in Edinburgh city centre. A car whizzed down the road, through a red light and slap-bang into the side of my car. I was seriously shaken – so much so that when the driver of the other car jumped out and started haranguing me for causing the injury myself, I wondered if he was right. Eyewitnesses approached and confirmed that he was entirely in the wrong, and his insurance company eventually covered all costs. It turned out he actually worked for the insurance company. This was clearly a familiar tactic – to try immediately to shift the blame for any event onto the other person involved. Parting lovers often try the same trick. I could not now look at a policeman. I turned away whenever a police vehicle drove by. I knew that forgiveness was necessary, and I kept failing to find ways of reaching that peaceful place. “Compensation” has become something of a dirty word in Britain these days, as lawyers climb onto the US bandwagon and advertise their services as agents for anyone seeking financial redress for any wrong done to them.

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I did not consider my legal action to be at all grasping. Rather, it strikes me as regrettable that the perpetrators of egregious misdeeds, such as the one from which I suffered, had to be forced to admit their folly. We are encouraged to admire the police. Hardly a night passes without the television schedules including some dramatic fictional depiction of police life. I remember when Z-Cars started in the 1960s, which at the time was a bold modernisation of the Dixon of Dock Green image. It moved from the bobby on the beat to the copper in the car, whizzing around to apprehend criminals. Now, from Prime Suspect to Line of Duty to Spiral, a police drama is a ratings winner. Is this really what Sir Robert Peel envisaged when he brought about the Metropolitan Police Act in 1829, and gave rise to the homonymous “bobbies” on the beat? Ironically, he died from injuries following a road traffic injury (RTI), involving the popular mode of transport at the time – he was thrown off a horse in 1850. So the police in Britain have not been part of our society for long, but we now depend on them to “keep the peace”. If we are burgled, we call the police. If we are attacked or raped, we call the police. If we are worried about crowd control or traffic, we expect the police to manage things. Political parties vie to assure the electorate that there will be more police than ever before under their governance. What is never pledged or even suggested is an effective accountability mechanism. Who sanctions them to do as they do? Who monitors their actions? Who trusts them? Police spokesmen repeatedly claim to be improving their training procedures. Back in 1998, the House of Commons was told that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) had provided forces with detailed guidelines on police driver training. “Such training is progressive,” MPs were told. However, it is ultimately for individual chief constables to determine the extent of training received by their officers and how they are deployed . . . The key issue is the need to train officers so they are capable of understanding modern road conditions and exercise all due care when travelling at speeds and in conditions beyond those experienced by the general motorist. Hansard Written Answers for 22 April 1998 In December 2000, ACPO launched a national training guide setting out minimum standards for police drivers. At the launch, the Chief Constable of Sussex Police called it “a positive step forward”, and the

128  Plodding on

Driving Standards Agency representative said it would lead to “a reduction in the number of accidents and incidents in which police vehicles are involved.” Has it? Ultimately, the police forces are accountable to the Home Secretary. Indirectly, that means that they are accountable to you and I, but in practice this is a dysfunctional relationship. There is a small and under-funded body called the Police Complaints Authority which tries to investigate matters referred to it, but the onus is on the citizen to lodge a complaint and the entire process is, by definition, post hoc. In December 2000, the Government announced the establishment of a new body – an independent police complaints commission. This came six months after Liberty, the human rights organisation, published a report recommending the establishment of such a body. Liberty welcomed the Government’s announcement, but expressed concern as to whether the detail of this proposal would allow all the report’s recommendations – many borrowed from Liberty – to be implemented in practice. In any case, it was a stabledoor-locking exercise. The horses continue to bolt. “The first duty of the police,” according to the Police Federation, “is the protection of life.” I saw my lawyer Keith Taylor again. He told me that nothing much would happen for some months, if not longer, and that I would have to be reassessed yet again for permanent ongoing damage. It seemed I must appear as reduced as possible in my capabilities if I were to win any compensation, while at the same time attempting to present myself to the world as employable. “Should I walk away from this civil case?” I asked. “No, but the doctors’ assessments are a little disappointing,” Keith said, implying that I had overly impressed the doctors. By now, I had read the hospital notes covering my treatment, so remembered the Astley Ainslie psychiatrist’s comments: “Her initial superficial presentation is generally very good and this may mislead others into thinking that her recovery is rather better than is the case so far.” I did not walk away. Keith Taylor did not recommend that I should. Too many people have been through a similar case to mine, or worse, and had no possibility of justice. If I end up losing the case, I thought, that result will carry its own message. My civil case was due to come to court in the autumn of 2002, three-and-a-half years after the injury. I increasingly dreaded appearing in court. Since I retained no memory of the injury itself I feared cross-examination. Three weeks before the appointed court date, Keith Taylor, who had been diligently building the case, called to tell me that the Met

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had offered to settle out of court by offering me money. “If you refuse and continue with the court case, you could receive three or four times what they’re offering,” he said. “Of course, if they win you’ll get nothing.” The amount offered would not change my life. Formally, the Metropolitan Police did not lose this case. Nor did they win it. I accepted. Coincidentally, my chronic fatigue summarily ended. “Clearly, these events are related,” said a friend. Perhaps. I now re-entered media contact books as a campaigner on police driving. I am not. But my experience augmented my interest in global road safety. On World Health Day 2004, the World Health Organization launched a road-safety campaign with the slogan “Road Safety is No Accident”. They made a point of referring to “injuries” – or deaths – never “accidents”. This accorded with my thinking, although my learned friend and owner of the East Lothian cottage where I began inching back to normality reminded me of the Latin root of the word, which suggests that “accident” simply means an unforeseen event and is therefore technically an accurate term for what happened. Be that as it may, road injuries and deaths are now so common worldwide that five years after the WHO campaign, in 2009, the first ever United Nations conference addressing road safety was held in Moscow. The world has accepted a heavy price for the right to drive freely and fast. Our love affair with the internal combustion engine undoubtedly takes its toll, and we seem to accept the price that must be paid for driving around in lethal weapons. Thousands of people die every year. Following years of campaigning by the Global Road Safety Commission, the side-effects of road-building and vehicle-use in the developing world would be tackled. I decided to go to Moscow to learn more, so registered with the press bureau, booked flights and cheap accommodation and headed east – alone. What was discussed was sobering. For instance, in Africa alone, road deaths were killing more people under 20 than malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis combined. Road safety measures – seatbelts, a ban on drinking and driving, the use of helmets when on a motorbike, and the provision of bridges and underpasses on six-lane highways – were seldom part of developing-world culture and practice. At the end of the conference, a motion was passed to instigate the Decade of Global Road Safety (2011–2020), with a goal to stabilise and then reduce the forecast level of road traffic fatalities around the world. The motivation for this event was actually as much economic as compassionate: national economies suffer beyond measure from the decimation of workforces following road injuries and deaths.

130  Plodding on

I returned to Britain, armed with sufficient argument and factual material to win a commission to make two programmes for BBC Radio 4 on the topic. The budget allowed us to visit Kenya and Costa Rica, both countries where the statistics for deaths and injuries on the roads were eye-watering. I would like to think that the resulting programmes were at least informative. Allan had now accepted the job of Bureau Chief at the BBC’s Paris office, which delighted me since it was easy and relatively cheap to visit, and full of diversions when he was working. Our lives seemed to have weathered the storms and buffets of the “unforeseen event”. Gradually, the world was forgetting my injury. When I was hired for work, it was never suggested that my contribution could or would be anything other than first-class. Politics, the arts, human rights, education – all my familiar fields of work – reappeared, and I was relieved that quality broadcasting had not died while I had been flirting with the same fate. BBC 4 had been founded, with a documentary strand called Storyville. The distinguished documentary-maker Roger Graef won a commission to make a documentary with me about my experience, called Who Am I Now? This allowed me to visit my former consultant Dr. Richard Greenwood at the National Hospital, who I had not now seen for two years. I remembered that he did not expect me to return to earning a living. When I told him that I would be presenting Radio 4’s The World Tonight live that evening – and he hadn’t seen me for two years – he murmured “exceptional”. I was hired to present a new Saturday morning discussion-programme on BBC Radio 4, Talking Politics, which ran for seven years, and I was occasionally asked to present The World this Weekend and The World at One for Radio 4. Broadcasting live was now possible. I had not looked in the mirror for a long time. One morning, Allan, on his way back to Paris, phoned to tell me that he had left his passport behind. Could I bring it to the station from where he was starting his journey? Just out of the shower, I called a taxi, pulled on a sweater and trousers and within 15 minutes was rushing through the station. As I neared him, I saw him blench. I had not had time to blow-dry my hair into its customary fringe, so my injury was clearly visible – a somewhat jagged scar across my right eyebrow, still angry-looking after years. As I made my way back home, I resolved to investigate restorative surgery, which the National Health Service did provide since the aim was not so much to gild the lily as to protect the squeamish. The operation was done at London’s Royal Free Hospital under a general anaesthetic. Although I looked like an unsuccessful prize-fighter immediately afterwards, the work settled down within a few months.

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Figure 8.1  Medical illustration of Sheena’s right-eye scarring Source: NHS Royal Free Hospital

Simon Withey, my surgeon, called me in for an assessment after six months. “I can improve on that,” he said. So yet again, I was under the knife. The final result is good. No horses have been frightened to date. I began to present the annual coverage of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. In 2005, an online channel called Teachers TV was launched, which ran for five years. I auditioned to present the weekly news programme, and was hired. On Christmas Day 2005, in Edinburgh, Allan and I hosted late lunch for my family. It was a traditional day: we watched the Queen’s Christmas message, and played familiar family games before clearing up and sharing the presents we had bought each other. After the family had left for home, Allan and I exchanged gifts. I cannot now remember what I gave Allan. I will never forget what he gave me. I have never taken it off the fourth finger of my left hand. Six months later, my father married us in the Playfair Library in the University of Edinburgh. Today, Edinburgh is home.

Chapter 9

Brave neurological world

Much has been written at an academic level about brain injury and its consequences. I am told that this field’s bible is known as the “Lezak”, which interests me, having read part of a work produced by Thomas Kay and Muriel Lezak, called ’The Nature of Head-Injury’ in Traumatic Brain Injury and Vocational Rehabilitation, written in 1990. It sets out to tackle what they call the “ten myths of ‘recovery’” which they seek to “debunk”. I immediately identified with one of the myths targeted – that “Recovery Occurs in a Year”. This myth was already out-of-date, I think, when they wrote the book. I would suggest that setting any time limit on recovery is unwise. The authorities are guarded: the Brain and Spine Foundation tells us that “as a general rule recovery after a severe head injury takes many months . . . some degree of recovery may continue for several years, especially in younger patients”. I was 44 when I suffered a very severe head-injury. I undoubtedly experienced some degree of recovery for years. Twenty years on, I fancy that I am still experiencing subtle improvements – albeit indirect ones, like finally addressing my weight gain. But I took issue with Kay and Lezak’s attempts to debunk the fundamental notion of recovery. We avoid phrases such as “recovery after head-injury”. Most people’s experience, and therefore expectations, regarding illness and injury is one of temporary reduction in functioning, followed by a gradual return to normalcy. People get sick, go to hospital, and get better. Bones are broken, casts are applied for a period, muscle strength regained over several months, and scars fade. When commonplace notions of recovery are applied to head injury, however, considerable harm can be done. Almost never does a patient “recover”; the residual deficits are usually significant and permanent.

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The continual expectation of recovery can lead clients and families into denial, frustration, disappointment, and ever worse, extremely unrealistic expectations and planning . . . we prefer to speak in terms of hope for as much improvement as possible, to build in realistic expectations from the beginning. Ten years after the injury, I was irritated to read this. I was working as a freelance journalist again in radio and TV. Twenty years since the injury, I have mellowed. I do live, I know, with “residual deficits”: my sense of smell is at best vestigial; my short-term memory requires a form of active reinforcement unnecessary pre-injury; my singing voice is replaced by a crow’s rasping caw (a doctor recently told me that survivors of various traumas lose the ability to sing, but no-one knows why); my finger remains permanently bent. I choose not to drive, despite holding a valid licence, since I remain nervous about my right-field vision. Perhaps Allan’s phrase “my new normal” – which I only read when we wrote this book – is my current condition. Perhaps the work I have been and still am commissioned to do is conducted within the context of “permanent residual deficits”. And perhaps with the help of acquired care and caution I am living and working within my cognitive and physical means. I know what I have achieved over these years in terms of meeting deadlines and expectations, initiating enterprises and property purchases, and tackling challenges. Friends and strangers no longer refer to or possibly even remember the 1999 injury.

Neuroplasticity and cognitive reserve Why is Sheena an exception? This is the million-dollar question that all clinicians ask. I can speculate that her personality played a central role; Sheena is self-motivated and she has a natural curiosity and thirst for knowledge. I can wonder if it was the Scottish upbringing and resilience, with an attitude of “get on with it”. Is it the unwavering support of Allan, as well as family and friends? Probably all of these contribute. What about neuroscience: can it help? In 1999, the term neuroplasticity was not as commonly used as it is today. In essence this is the brain’s ability to regenerate and form new connections, which can be adaptive (and also maladaptive). Changes in brain function can be measured on neuropsychological tests; however, we do not know if the brain has reformed a connection (restitution), or whether a different brain

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region has taken on a function (substitution). Alternatively, neuroplasticity or changes in the brain can be measured by using a range of neuro-imaging techniques like functional magnetic reasoning imaging (fMRI; e.g., Reid et al., 2016). Does Sheena have an extraordinary capacity for neuroplasticity? Another possibility is that Sheena had an unusual degree of cognitive reserve to draw upon. In general, notions of cognitive reserve have been proposed to explain why some individuals experience better functional recovery in the context of brain lesions like TBI, or why some individuals are less affected by neuro-degenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. Recently, cognitive reserve has been associated with functional outcome and identified as being neuro-protective, with the suggestion that it may be a useful indicator of TBI severity and assist with neurorehabilitation planning (e.g., Leary et al., 2018; Steward et al., 2018). What exactly is cognitive reserve? A number of indicators of cognitive reserve have been used, including estimated premorbid level of intelligence, years of education, occupational experience and enriching activities. Schneider and colleagues (2014) found that for individuals in rehabilitation after a moderate-severe TBI, educational attainment was a robust predictor of disability at one year post-TBI. Sheena obtained an Honours degree from Edinburgh University, which places her at a very high level, as well as having an estimated premorbid IQ in the superior range, even when in PTA, and her occupational experiences would certainly classify as enriching. Can it be that simple?

On the positive side, I have at last shed the excess weight gained when my appetite-control mechanism seemed to have been disabled, and am 30kg lighter; and I am no longer depressed. Both these improvements are related to the original injury’s consequences. I sometimes dream again, too, after almost two decades of dreamless nights. The minister at my father’s old church preached recently on the liberating power of forgiveness. I listened intently. I think he is right. If we are brought up Christian, it is drummed into us: “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In reality, forgiveness is far from easy. The minister quoted from South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has written extensively on forgiveness. He asserts that not to forgive disfigures humanity. “There is no future without forgiveness.” I hear

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him, and I think about the circumstances he has lived through. I resolve to try to forgive. It is hard. I try pitying bad police drivers; there are, I tell myself, a few brave good apples operating in a bad-apple police culture. I am no Christ figure. But I have no overweening desire for revenge – rather a will to see exemplary justice done in the form of an ill-trained driver owning up to getting it wrong, thereby possibly provoking an improvement in police instruction and practice when it comes to using the lethal weapon that is a car or a van. “The police are the public and the public are the police,” said Sir Robert Peel in the nineteenth century. “The police are members of the public who are paid to give time and attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.” I continue to strive towards genuine, heartfelt forgiveness. I am still sometimes asked for advice by friends or relatives of people who have suffered some sort of brain-injury. They want to know what will happen, and whether and when things will get better. I always say that I am no clinician but do know that it is impossible to generalise about brain-injury. I am a second-rate guinea pig in that on paper I should be a textbook example of how certain injuries produce predictable long-term results: ongoing ataxia, loss of memory, mood-change, dependency and so on. No-one can explain why I do not conform to that expected norm. What I can say is that one’s condition can continue to improve for years, not months. The changes become perceptible largely to those who do not see one often. The safety-net of an insurance policy aided my financial health. And the support and stimulus of other people, principally Allan, was immeasurably valuable. I have read in the Lezak book that “there is a small group of individuals who have a severe or very severe injury who do exceptionally well”. What qualifies one for this clinically imprecise category, and am I a member?

Rebuilding life after brain injury Yes, Sheena is in this category. She has done exceptionally well. She is a remarkable example for others to have no doubt that it is possible to recover many abilities and rebuild a very full and rewarding life after experiencing a very severe TBI, with all that entails. Allan too is exceptional. He navigated the difficult and ever-shifting terrain of main carer, a role that he chose when he could have simply returned to his

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overseas job. He went from being Sheena’s boyfriend to main carer, to partner and then husband. His insights are many and I believe his frank openness will be an invaluable source of strength for other carers too. Neurorehabilitation is a creative and unknown endeavour that we embark upon together. You need a team; as a clinician, there is knowledge and there is instinct. Yes, it is a science and there is an evidence-base to draw upon. Yet, the neurorehabilitation process requires experience-based intuition. At the end of the day every person can be the one to have a remarkable recovery. Yes, it may not be the same as before, but it is possible that life can be filled with many experiences that result in a productive and joyful life. The rewards are many for those who embark on this journey. For me, there is only deep gratitude for Sheena and Allan; they have taught me much, my life has been enriched and I hope others benefit too.

Figure 9.1  Sheena at time of writing, 2019 Source: Douglas Robertson Photography

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References Leary, J.B., Kim, G.Y., Bradley, C.L., Hussain, U.Z., Sacco, M., Bernad, M., and Chan, L. (2018). “The association of cognitive reserve in chronic-phase functional and neuropsychological outcomes following traumatic brain injury”. Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, 33(1), E28–E35. Reid, L.B., Boyd, R.N., Cunnington, R. and Rose, S.E. (2016). “Interpreting intervention induced neuroplasticity with fMRI: the case for multimodal imaging strategies”. Neural Plasticity, 2016, article ID 2643491. Schneider, E.B., Sur, S., Raymont, V., Duckworth, J., Kowalski, R.G., Efron, D.T., and Stevens, R.D. (2014). “Functional recovery after moderate/severe traumatic brain injury: a role for cognitive reserve?”. Neurology, 82(18), 1636–1642. Steward, K.A., Kennedy, R., Novack, T.A., Crowe, M., Marson, D.C. and Triebel, K.L. (2018). “The role of cognitive reserve in recovery from traumatic brain injury”. Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, 33(1), E18–E27. Tutu, D. (1999). No Future Without Forgiveness. London: Random House.

Index

acquired brain injury (ABI) 9 Acute Brain Injury Unit (ABIU) 114, 115 acute environmental management 37–38 acute neurorehabilitation 35, 39–40, 61 agitation 35, 37, 38 agnosia 43 alcohol 72, 99 altered states of consciousness 12 amnesia 9, 30–31, 34, 40, 57; assessment 42, 66, 70; autobiographical and semantic memories 119–120; duration of 59; severity of traumatic brain injury 12–13, 14 anosognosia 110, 116, 117 anterograde amnesia 12, 30–31, 42; see also amnesia anxiety 7, 26, 106 aphasia 40, 42, 48, 51, 53, 70 apraxia 43 Arnold, Eve 49, 92 arousal 35, 76 asking questions 22, 31–32 assertiveness 32 assessment 40–46, 52, 55–56, 65–66, 70–72; civil case 128; post-traumatic amnesia 14; reassessment 84–86, 88–89; returning to work 94

assisted ventilation 3, 6 Astley Ainslie Hospital 61, 64, 66–70, 72, 77, 116 attention 39, 40, 44, 67, 70, 71 automatic processes 46 BBC 1, 18, 103, 126; Allan’s work 16, 47, 82, 94–95, 106–107, 111, 112, 130; International Question Time 68–69, 96; radio work 111, 130; support from the 5, 19, 117; White City 29 behaviour 12, 40; assessment 65; behaviour modification techniques 37; behavioural regulation 37, 118; disinhibition 78–79, 81, 109, 110; neurorehabilitation 66 Billing, Ninder 111 BINJ Clinic 88, 115 Boston Naming Test 48, 50–51 Boyle, Frank 99–100 brain: impact of TBI on the 9, 10–11; plasticity 75, 133–134; see also frontal lobes; neuropsychology; occipital lobe carer role 7, 93, 108, 135–136 CAT scans 9 catheterization 34 cerebral swelling 11

140 Index cerebrospinal fluid 9, 11 Channel 4 1, 4, 29, 101, 103, 111, 117, 120 Christensen, Anne-Lise 87 civil case 113–114, 126–127, 128–129 clinical neuropsychology 40–46, 71–72 cognition 12, 40; assessment 41–42, 65; neurorehabilitation 66, 87–88 cognitive behavioural therapy 66, 116, 118, 121 cognitive impairment 24, 40–41, 44, 66, 67, 71, 96; see also intellectual functioning cognitive reserve 134 coma 6, 21, 45; duration of 9, 12, 14; Glasgow Coma Scale 3, 11, 13, 14; stages of recovery 35 community integration 93, 108 compensation 126–127, 128 computerized axial tomography (CAT) 9 concentration 44, 75–76 confabulation 71 confidence 96, 97 confusion 24, 25, 31, 35, 38, 50 consciousness 12, 35–36, 57 crosswords 74, 75 Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) 98 CT scans 9, 11–12, 18 dementia 81 depression 68, 93, 106, 116, 118–120, 134 Diana, Princess 58–59 diffuse axonal injury 10–11, 12 disinhibition 78–79, 80, 109, 110 distress 26 “dreamtalk” 31–32, 35–36 drinking 72, 99 driving 88–89, 113, 133 dysphasia 40, 68

eating: difficulties with 34, 40, 50, 53–55, 69–70; monitoring 114; weight gain 77–79, 80–81, 93, 109, 115–116, 118, 122 educational attainment 134 emotions 7, 12, 116; emotional numbness 27, 29; emotional regulation 37, 118 energization 37 environmental management 37–38, 65 executive functions 43, 51, 59; assessment 36, 41, 44, 85–86, 94; frontal lobe 36 exercise 105, 119 expectations 9, 71, 132–133 extubation 22, 25 eye damage 23, 29, 69, 88–90, 114 facial reconstruction surgery 29–30 family 3–4, 18, 19, 20, 56, 124 fatigue 61, 74, 77, 98, 118, 124; assessment 71, 84; end of 129; as lifelong problem 114, 122; managing 93, 94, 96, 105–106 fear 7 “fight” metaphor 21 finances 121 forgiveness 126, 134–135 fractures 10 friends 19, 20, 83, 124 frontal dynamic aphasia 53 frontal lobes: damage 18, 24, 27, 29, 79, 81, 110, 116; dysfunction 40, 71; functions 36–37, 43, 59, 81, 86, 93, 94 frontotemporal dementia (FTD) 81 games 74–75 Gilpin, Trish 34, 40, 50, 54 Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) 3, 11, 13, 14 goals 87, 93

Index 141 Greenwood, Richard 12, 35, 40, 57, 61, 87–88, 105, 115, 130 guided recovery 75 haematoma 18 haemorrhages 10, 12, 18, 22 Hayling Sentence Completion Task 86, 94, 110 hope 23 hypothalamus 81 hypoxia 11 identity 93, 119 imitation 59 impulsiveness 59, 61, 79, 80, 93, 109 independence 58, 65, 66, 69 information processing 36, 37, 41–42, 44, 71, 86 inhibition 59, 80–81; see also disinhibition intellectual functioning 24, 36, 40, 41, 84; see also cognitive impairment intelligence 24, 40, 41, 42, 44, 72, 134 Intensive Care Unit 3, 6, 25, 26–27, 31–32, 35 interval training 106 intubation 3, 8, 13 ischaemia 11 journalism 100, 101–105, 117 Kay, Thomas 132–133 Kreutzer, J.S. 118 language 40, 52–53; assessment 36, 41, 42, 52, 53, 85; crosswords 74–75 learning techniques 66 Leng, Nicholas 114 Lezak, Muriel 132–133, 135 Liberty 128 literacy 43 Livingstone, Ken 120

loss of consciousness 12, 13 Luria, Alexander 36 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) 9, 12, 110 Mateer, Catherine 87 maxillofacial surgery 7 medication 13, 67, 116, 119, 121, 124 memory 12, 14, 30, 40, 56; assessment 36, 41, 42, 71, 85; autobiographical and semantic memories 119–120; cognitive impairment 67; rehabilitation 70; retrieval of memories 45–47, 60; short-term 133; see also amnesia meta-cognitive function 37, 118 microvascular injuries 11 military metaphors 21 monitoring 36, 37, 110 mood 40, 42, 65, 68, 76, 93, 119–120, 135 motor functions 58, 105–106 movement 43 MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) 9, 12, 110 multi-focal microvascular injuries 11 multidisciplinary teams 40, 115 Murphy, Declan 116, 118 National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery 31, 32–33, 34–35, 37–38, 84, 87, 114–115 neuroimaging 11–12; see also scans neuroplasticity 75, 133–134 neuropsychology 40–45, 71–72, 84–87 neurorehabilitation: acute 35, 39, 61; Acute Brain Injury Unit 115; approaches to 65–66, 86–87; building confidence 97; community integration 93; experience-based intuition 136; guided recovery 75; impact on marital relationships

142 Index 108; outpatient 35, 84, 93; post-acute 64–74; see also recovery newspapers 99–100 numeracy 43, 85 occipital lobe 18, 23, 44, 88, 90, 116–117 occupational therapy 40, 60, 68, 70–71, 77, 115 oedema 11 Oliver Zangwell Centre 32, 61, 87, 115 paralysis 23 passive environmental management 37 Peel, Robert 127, 135 perception 43 photographs 45, 49 physiotherapy 40, 61, 68, 76, 115 pneumothorax 18 police: civil case against 113–114, 126–127, 128–129; criminal trial 98–99; incident report 2; police driving 111, 127–128, 129, 135 Police Complaints Authority 128 post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) 9, 30, 34, 40, 48; assessment 42, 44; attention and concentration 44; duration of 59; environmental management 37; severity of traumatic brain injury 12–13, 14; stages of recovery 35; see also amnesia post-traumatic hydrocephalus 11 post-traumatic seizures 11 Prigatano, George 87 primary focal injuries 10 problem-solving 69, 94 prognosis 14, 44, 59, 72 progress, signs of 23, 24, 33, 55, 58–59 psychoeducation 66 psychological interventions 66 psychotherapy 66, 68, 76; see also cognitive behavioural therapy

reading 40, 41, 42, 44 recovery 71, 84, 109, 122, 135–136; cognitive reserve 134; confidence 96, 97; early 28; guided 75; myths of 132–133; role of family 56; stages of 35; see also neurorehabilitation rehabilitation see neurorehabilitation relationships 93, 108, 110, 123, 124 “residual deficits” 132–133 restorative surgery 130–131 retrograde amnesia 12, 30, 40, 42, 57, 66, 70, 119; see also amnesia road safety 129–130 Robertson, Ian 75 scans 9, 11–12, 18, 22, 110 Schneider, E.B. 134 secondary damage 11 secondary trauma 123 sedation 13 seizures 11 self-awareness 56–57, 66, 78–79, 109–110, 116, 118 self, sense of 93, 119–120 Shallice, Tim 36 sleep 106 smell, sense of 81, 133 Sohlberg, McKay 87 Somerville, Julia 48 South Africa 96, 112, 113, 123, 124, 134 spatial perception 36, 43, 85 speech 24, 27–28, 52, 53, 81 speech therapy 40, 69, 70, 115 speed of processing 36, 37, 41, 44, 71, 86 spontaneous speech 53 staff 22, 25–27, 31–32, 40, 53–54, 115 stimulation 38 stroke 105–106, 115 Stuss, Don 36 surgery 7, 29–30, 130–131

Index 143 tangential talking 80–81, 109 task setting 36, 37 Taylor, Keith 113–114, 128 television 101–105, 111; see also BBC; Channel 4 traumatic brain injury (TBI) 9–15; Acute Brain Injury Unit 115; cognitive reserve 134; impact on individual and life roles 65, 118–119; impact on marital relationships 108; primary and secondary damage 10–11; severity of 12–14 trial against police 98–99 Tutu, Desmond 134–135

visual perception 36, 40, 41, 43, 44, 85 voluntary control 36 walking 74, 75, 77 Ward, Nick 105–106 weight gain 77–78, 80–81, 93, 109, 115–116, 118, 121 weight loss 134 Whiteley, Glenn 98–99 Wilson, Barbara 87, 115 Wilson, J.T. 14 work 89, 92, 94–98, 101–108, 110–112, 117–118, 120–122, 123, 130 Yishay, Yehuda Ben 87